an interesting walk

Not sure if it was due to yesterday's wonderful 60* weather or what but the dogs in the neighborhood were acting strange today.
We live in a neighborhood with a lot of dogs, acre + lots, and lots of natural areas. There are no sidewalks and all the houses are set a good distance from the road. Except for morning rush hour its like walking in a nice large park.

Fast forward to today as we approached our turnaround point - which is near a house with an elderly beagle and a young lab and a shih tzu. The latter has a habit, although not frequent, of wandering, today it was out aggravating everyone. I heard a bunch of dogs barking in that area but couldn't see anything at first. Then I saw the shih tzu, who decided to angrily charge Bugsy, who was busy sniffing.

The shih tzu, clearly upset that his angry agitated barking wasn't being taken notice of, did a lunge and yap yap. Finally Bugsy looked up, body language soft and unbothered, and seemed to say, "quiet down little one" and he went back to sniffing.
The dumb dog kept at him so he went to sniff it and it took off - his brain clearly changed to "rabbit" "chase it!" Scary moment but I was able to divert him and we went back to walking with the dumb dog following and yapping the whole time.

I found it interesting to watch and quite humorous too as the shih tzu seemed so offended that its efforts to agitate were for naught.

About two miles later we passed a house with a grumpy, intact male GSD, it decided to charge us, complete with nervous tongue flicks. He always tries to assert his dominance over Bugsy and there have been some tense times between the two, so when I saw the GSD coming and it ignoring its owner, I decided that stopping and talking to the GSD was my best option.

The GSD was fairly intense but B was calm and his tail wagged. The GSD was growling and trying to put his head over B's shoulder when the owner (7 mos pregnant) came and got him. B then went over to say hello to the owner and her son, sniffed the GSD's butt (who was still growling) and then marked their mailbox which made me and the GSD's owner laugh.

Another neighbor was out running and saw it all. We caught them up afterward and she was laughing but saying, 'whew thank goodness Bugsy is a sweetheart,' that could have been ugly.

That is very true, I was really proud of the beast today, he has returned to the place he used to inhabit which is a comfortable and confident place.
He is master of his domain :)
Good boy Bugs!